


after the end, before the beginning

by MasterOfAllImagination



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Post-ep 5, because I couldn't leave well enough alone I suppose, slash if you've got your goggles on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-07 15:27:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19087819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: Shcherbina receives a phone call.





	after the end, before the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> If Valery had a contact that was willing to smuggle away his tapes, perhaps he also had a contact that was willing to risk helping him get in touch with Boris one last time.

The phone wakes him on the first ring. Boris doesn’t sleep as soundly as he used to. When he wanders into the kitchen, the light through the window is still at greyish half-strength, as if filtered through smoke.

“Shcherbina,” he grunts into the receiver.

“Boris.”

It’s a rasp of a voice. A wisp. A whisper. He recognizes it all the same, almost immediately, and takes in a breath that rattles. “V—”

“Don’t,” Valery says.

Months have passed since the trial. Long enough for paranoia to fade; to grow weak and flee entirely in the rush of feeling that Valery’s voice brings. There is silence for a moment. Boris doesn’t dare muddle it with his questions. That much, at least, he remembers not to do.

“I don’t have very long. A few minutes, at most.”

Boris presses the receiver painfully close to his ear, straining for any stray sound. “Are you alright?”

The answer comes too quickly. “Yes, everything’s fine.” Then there’s a pause, which seems all the longer for Valery’s initial rush. “How—how are you?”

“The same, but worse, I’m afraid. And yourself?”

“Likewise.” 

He pours himself into a kitchen chair bone by bone. Coughs wrack him for a time. “It’s very early.”

Valery, too, begins coughing; as though it were contagious, like a yawn. “I know,” he manages.

On the tip of Boris’s tongue is a reprimand: a muscle memory he'd forgotten he possessed.  _Valery_ , he would say, in a tone soaked with frustration. The gap drags. He makes himself, instead, point out, “You said you didn’t have very long.”

More coughing. He wonders if that’s how bad _he_ sounds.

“I suppose I just wanted—”

Coughing again.

He murmurs, “Easy, now. Wouldn't want to tell me everything upfront. That's how you get in trouble, you know.”               

On the other end, the coughing tips sharply into wheezing static, like sudden laughter.

Boris, stunned, listens to it a moment. He asks, "That a smile?” 

When Valery responds, "Yeah," he can hear it in his voice.

Boris tries to picture it. He'd only seen Valery's smile a handful of times. Always hesitant when it came. A bit of pain mixed in, too, just behind the eyes; hiding in the folds of his mouth. But—a smile, nonetheless. “Yeah,” Boris echoes, as gently as he can with a throat roughened by illness. “You alright?” he asks again.

“Boris.”

He closes his eyes.             

“I am so _exhausted_ ,” Valery whispers, as though this were some terrible secret, torn from him at last.

Boris shifts from where he’s leaning an elbow on the table. Suddenly, he feels the cold of the linoleum leaching through his socks. The tick of the kitchen clock becomes audible. His mouth is dry.

“I—I apologize. That isn’t what I—what I meant to say.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” Boris grunts.

Valery hisses, “I’ve _everything_ to be sorry for.”

Boris catches himself before he can say his name.

There's a series of choked noises on the other end of the line. Before this moment, he's never heard Valery weep.

He gets up. Fumbles out the vodka and mechanically fills a glass. Knocks it down, then a second for good measure; knowing full well his doctors say he shouldn't and that he'll pay for it later. He hesitates before pouring a third. This one he holds up in the air, so that the morning light briefly filters through cheap glass, and then empties it into the sink. 

"What do you want me to say?"

The sound of controlled breathing.

An inexpressible emotion rises within Boris. He pushes it back down, only for it to rise again; unignorable. His voice drops. “I’m not going to say it’ll be alright. But—well, I don’t know.” He doesn’t believe what he’s saying, and he knows Valery won’t either. "Maybe it will. It’ll be alright.” 

Valery’s voice is rough. “I’ve missed your thick head.”

Boris holds that knowledge fiercely, like a victory. “I’ve missed yours.”

They breathe together: the harsh, audible breaths of dying men. He opens his mouth. “I—”

A jarring noise breaks through the connection. Then Valery cuts over him in a rush. “I have to go.” He says something else, but it’s muffled, as if directed to someone else in the room. Back into the receiver, he says quickly, “Boris.”

Panic rushing into his chest, he blurts, “I— _Valera_ —”

He wants him to hear. _Fuck_ the KGB, he needs—

“Goodb—”

The line clicks.

Boris doesn’t move. Doesn’t dare hang up, or even lower the phone.

The kitchen has grown incrementally brighter. He looks up from the floor slowly, lest the rising sun reveal the last quarter hour to have been naught but a sick man’s pathetic hallucination. But the glass and the bottle are both still on the counter, and his feet are numb. 

Eventually, he decides that if he _had_ dreamt it, he would be warmer; and he would at least have finally gotten to hear Valery say goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to make it better, but I've possibly only ended up making it worse (and committing grave errors in regards to Soviet life in the process). Shoutout to pottedmusic, who by coincidence was also posting about sad toasts simultaneously to my editing this fic--hope I got it right!


End file.
